The Rise of the Wrym Lord tdw-2

by Wayne Thomas Batson

  THE BATTLE AT YEWLAND

  T he moon painted the Dragon Guard of Alleble silver as they surged across the night sky en route to Yewland. Kaliam commanded the guard from the lead dragon. On Kaliam’s left flank, Aelic rode upon Gabby, Gwenne’s dragon steed, sent from Alleble. Oswyn, Sir Gabriel, Trenna, and Lady Merewen’s dragons flew in formation on either side.

  Aelic was thinking of Antoinette. He didn’t know why he felt so sure, but he truly believed she was still alive. But in the midst of the fight? How long? Aelic silently appealed to King Eliam for strength-strength to win the battle and deliver Antoinette from her bonds.

  Kaliam’s dragon steed swooped low. Aelic looked down. The trail of the Paragor Knights was becoming very clear on the land below. They were heading right for the forests of Yewland, and because they were on foot, they were not far ahead of the Dragon Guard.

  A deep horn sounded. That was the signal from Kaliam to ride the dragons just above the ground for the last few leagues. There it is, Aelic thought. Just ahead was the large hill Kaliam had told them all to expect. They were to stay low until that hill, and then, as if the hill were a ramp, they would soar up over it and swoop down upon the enemy at the Forest Road. They will not know what hit them, Aelic thought as he turned and looked over his shoulder at the thousands of knights on their dragon steeds. The eyes of the riders flashed blue in the darkness.

  “This is it, Gabby!” Aelic called to his dragon. Aelic pulled back on the reins of his steed, and Gabby climbed high from the base of the hill. Up they all went, dragon after dragon. With their trajectory straight up, none of them could even see the trees that rose up on both sides of the Forest Road.

  But as they arced down, the forest-glowing with the fires of battle-rose up to meet them. Clashing warriors-some wearing the black and crimson of Paragory, and others the green and brown of Yewland-filled the Forest Road. Kaliam raced ahead and rode his steed into the wide gap between the trees. Aelic and the others glided in behind their Sentinel, weapons drawn.

  A hail of arrows, glistening briefly in the moonlight, sprayed from the trees on both sides of the road, adding to the fallen enemies that littered the ground. Kaliam, Aelic, and company raced west and did not worry about being slain by the arrows from their allies. For Yewland’s archers were born to wield a bow and raised to hunt in the dark. They picked off the enemy as fast as they could draw and fire.

  Nock, Mallik, and Sir Rogan must have reached Yewland in time to warn Queen Illaria! Aelic thought as the Dragon Guard rode into the fray.

  A warrior rose up ahead of Aelic and raised his sword menacingly, but before Aelic could thrust Fury forward, his dragon grabbed the enemy in her jaws and flung him cartwheeling into the air.

  The ranks of the enemy thickened as the Dragon Guard swept up the road. Aelic brought Fury down on the helmet of one soldier and swept the legs out from another. A sudden flash of orange flame to Aelic’s left distracted him, and he heard someone sing out, “Oh-ho!” Apparently, Oswyn had given the enemy a taste of his fire powder.

  Suddenly, Aelic sensed movement to his right and pulled the reins. Gabby’s wing bowled over a huge axe-wielding warrior. The enemy knight went down in a heap, but the axe struck the dragon’s wing at the joint. Gabby roared in agony, tried to stay above the ground, but tilted and crashed into the Blackwood side of the Forest Road.

  Aelic flew out of the saddle and hit the ground. His head barely missed the base of an enormous tree. Aelic jumped to his feet, shook the disorientation away, and began searching for Fury. Then he saw it, the blade shining blue in the moonlight that shone down between the gaps in the foliage. He ran for the blade, grabbed the grip, but it would not move. Aelic looked up and saw a heavy Paragor Knight standing upon the blade. His eyes flashed red as he raised his axe.

  The axe never fell. Gabby made sure of that. She severed the knight’s arm at the shoulder and spit it-axe and all-into the trees. The warrior howled, clutched his shoulder, and ran into the woods after his arm.

  Aelic looked at Gabby’s ruined right wing. It was a clean break, so she would not fly. He smiled reverently at Gwenne’s dragon and patted her on the nose. “You have fought well, Gabby,” he said. “Now, stay under the tree. Keep out of sight! I will return for you when I can.” He grabbed Fury and hurried to search for Antoinette.

  Most of the dragon-riders that left from Clarion were engaged in battle, but farther up the Forest Road, Kaliam and Lady Merewen were on foot. As they made their way around roaring fires, it became clear that the Wyrm Lord was not far away.

  “This way!” Kaliam yelled, and he ran to help a Yewland Brave, who was struggling with a dark warrior wearing a sharp helmet and a long scarlet cape. But the warrior struck before Kaliam could get there, and the brave fell to the ground.

  The warrior turned and raised two swords to greet Kaliam and Lady Merewen.

  “Rucifel!” Kaliam yelled.

  “Yes!” snarled the warrior. “It is fitting that you should know the name of your executioner. You, sir, are one of those whelps we fought at Mithegard! And, unless my eyes have failed, before me is Lady Merewen, traitor to Paragor’s cause! How fortunate that I should have the privilege of dispatching you both!”

  He leaped at them, both swords flying, striking with precision. And it was all Kaliam and Lady Merewen could do to fend off the initial onslaught. Kaliam quickly ducked one slash and drove his broadsword forward at Rucifel’s chest. Deflecting Kaliam’s thrust, Rucifel brought his other sword down hard, missing Kaliam by a fraction of an inch. Rucifel sidestepped a slash from Lady Merewen, and flung both blades at her midsection.

  She staggered backward to avoid his strike, and Kaliam advanced. Their battle raged out into the middle of the road. Yewland Braves loosed arrows from the heights of the trees, but the quick-moving Rucifel dodged them and kept coming. Kaliam defended, but like an uncoiling snake, Rucifel spun back the other way. Lady Merewen missed him with a high thrust, and Rucifel slammed a backfist into Kaliam’s chest. Kaliam sprawled on the road.

  Rucifel pounced, but Lady Merewen threw herself shoulder-first into her enemy’s back. Rucifel stumbled forward and drove one of his blades into the ground. Kaliam rolled to his feet and slammed his broadsword into the center of his enemy’s trapped blade. The sword cracked and split. Shards fell to the ground. Rucifel was left with one sword and two opponents.

  Aelic was cautiously approaching some enemy carriages, when a spear stuck hard into the wooden crate on the wagon in front of him. Aelic crashed Fury down on the spear, splitting it in two, before spinning around and driving his boot into the Paragor Knight’s stomach. The evil knight fell to the ground, clutching his midsection. A Yewland arrow from an unseen archer above finished him.

  Aelic began to search the wagons and carriages. Antoinette has to be in one of them! The battle was heavy around him, and he grew weary as he ran from wagon to wagon looking for, but not finding, Antoinette.

  Then ahead, he spotted a wagon pulled to the side of the Forest Road. A tall Paragor Knight stood at the rear of the wagon. He had long blond hair and a gray cloak around his shoulders. In his hand was a wide-bladed sword. It’s Kearn! What is he guarding? Aelic wondered.

  Cautiously, Aelic approached him.

  The Paragor Knight turned, and his green eyes met Aelic’s. “You!” Kearn screamed.

  “Where is Antoinette?” Aelic demanded. He let the tip of Fury drift down, preparing a moulinet.

  “Aelic!” came a voice from inside the wagon.

  Kearn laughed. “Does that answer your question?”

  “Let her go!” Aelic yelled.

  “What fun would that be? You come and get her!” Kearn said quietly, and he slashed his heavy blade in front of Aelic.

  “Aelic, no!” came Antoinette’s muffled voice. “Aelic, no! Don’t kill him!”

  “That’s right, Aelic!” Kearn sneered. “You cannot kill me, or-what was his name-Aidan, yes, that was it. Aidan will lose his best friend.”

&nbs
p; Aelic looked to the wagon and back to Kearn. He had to get Antoinette out. He had to save her. But in order to do it, he had to get past Kearn.

  Kearn lashed out with a two-fisted blow. Aelic blocked it at his waist. The strike was so hard that Aelic’s ears rung and his hands tingled.

  “You cannot kill me, Aelic!” Kearn mocked. “But I can kill you! And here is the marvelous thing about this arrangement. If I kill you, then I slay Aidan also!”

  Aelic stood for a moment very still, but his eyes darted as if he was engaged in some silent, desperate debate. Then, suddenly, he sprang at Kearn, unleashing a sweeping backhanded slash. Kearn blocked but had been caught off guard. Before he could duck completely out of the way, Aelic whipped Fury up and opened a gash in Kearn’s cheek. Kearn wiped at the blood with his hand and stared wide-eyed at Aelic.

  Aelic held Fury in one hand and stretched out his arm so that the sword’s point was at Kearn’s eye level. “Antoinette and Aidan might not kill you,” he said. “But I have no problem with it.”

  42

  THE WYRM LORD

  F ar ahead on the Forest Road, Mallik and Sir Rogan leaped from the trees into a mass of Paragor Knights. Nock remained high on a limb and covered them with arrow fire. Mallik came up swinging his massive hammer, crushing two enemies against the trunk of a Blackwood. Sir Rogan’s broadaxe felled three enemies as if they were saplings. The two Alleb warriors, with steely, grim purpose, marched side by side plowing up the Forest Road, and none withstood them. Nock leaped from tree to tree, keeping a watchful eye.

  “Is your axe full yet?” Mallik joked. “Shall we go home now?”

  Sir Rogan stroked his beard, glared at his friend, and thundered up the road.

  “I guess not,” Mallik said and raced to keep up with him.

  Since the battle began, the three of them had fought their way through more than a hundred Paragor Knights, and Nock had to climb down to scavenge for more arrows. They walked along unopposed for a time, but something about the quiet of the wood was unnerving. And the absence of the enemy, the absence of an attack, was more troubling still.

  Sir Rogan stopped unexpectedly and held up his large fist. “There is something on the air,” he said. His voice was low, gravelly, and full of anger. “It is like the burning of many things.” And soon, they all smelled it. With each step up the Forest Road, the odor became more acrid-and the sickening stench was almost too much to bear.

  They proceeded cautiously, taking slow, even breaths and straining to hear. Nock noticed that foliage along the road began to appear wilted, and many of the trees had an odd lean. Soon, the smell became stifling, and the smoldering trees on both sides were toppled and charred as if an intense fire had come upon them suddenly. Small fires crackled deep into the woods. The road rolled out ahead, gray and shadowy, but crisscrossed with strange twisting patterns.

  “Ah!” Nock exclaimed, pointing to their feet. “The road! Look at the road!”

  Mallik and Sir Rogan strained to see, but at first they could not tell what had terrified Nock. Then Mallik leaped to the side. “They are bodies!” he bellowed.

  “Shapes of bodies…,” Nock said.

  “King Eliam, save us!” Sir Rogan exclaimed. “They have been burned into the ground… reduced to an ashen imprint upon the road!”

  “… and bows,” Nock said as he recognized the distinctive shape of the Yewland Braves’ Blackwood bows burned into the road. “My kin!”

  “I am sorry, my friend,” said Mallik.

  “What has laid low so many braves?” Nock asked, his bow hanging limp at his side.

  Sir Rogan knelt by one of the bodies and stared. “It is near,” he said.

  “What do you mean by that?” Mallik demanded.

  “The Wyrm Lord,” growled Sir Rogan. “It would take more than a regular dragon’s fire to bring down the trees and burn hundreds of warriors into the ground.”

  Suddenly, Sir Rogan clutched his axe, looked skyward, and screamed with pent-up rage for the fallen at Mithegard, and delivered an unmistakable message: The enemy had better beware.

  Sir Rogan charged up the road. Mallik and Nock followed.

  The trail suddenly widened. The knights stopped and stood very still, their eyes locked on a huge, black, iron-framed carriage that sat upon eight enormous spoked wheels and was drawn by large horses. The top of the carriage was crowned with a dozen torches. A tendril of smoke escaped the roof and snaked up into the night sky.

  “We should not have come here!” whispered Nock urgently.

  “I feel the marrow in my bones beginning to freeze,” said Mallik.

  Sir Rogan did not reply.

  And then there was movement at the front of the carriage. Someone very tall stepped down. They heard the dull clink of metal and the heavy thud of his boots as he walked slowly toward the back. Hidden by shadow, they could not see his face, only that he had a weapon of some kind hanging at his side-and his eyes flashed red.

  He reached up and worked at something on the side of the carriage-metal sliding against metal. A voice came out of the shadows. It seemed to those who listened that the words were spoken from a grave. “Ancient One, how fortunate, three knights-a meal to enchance your strength. Go now and feast upon them. A taste of Alleble’s fall!”

  Though they knew they should flee, Mallik, Nock, and Sir Rogan stood rooted in the road as the huge doors atop the carriage swung open. A long, sharp gasp escaped the carriage as if something very large had drawn a breath. It was followed by a low growl that rose like the moaning of a haunted wind until it peaked with a hideous shriek. The sound rattled the Alleble Knights’ armor and chilled their skin.

  Nock stared at the top of the carriage, and what looked like a dark tentacle, blacker than the night shadows around it, began to creep out. Then another. And a third-twisting, grasping, reaching. They were not fleshly things, but rather tendrils of dark mist. More began to spill out of the carriage as if it were a cauldron that could not contain its horrid brew. The mist came more steadily, and the road became darker where it swirled.

  The tall figure standing beside the carriage laughed. His eyes flashed red, and he seemed to fade into the shadows as something rose out of the carriage and perched heavily upon it. It was a great winged beast, wreathed in shrouds of the swirling mist. The creature was most like to a dragon-wide wings, long neck and tail, and sharp scales armoring the length of its body. But the black mist that swirled all around the creature issued from its jaws and trailed out from its nostrils. Its eyes, smoldering, red, reptilian eyes, stared back with cunning beyond that of other wyrms. In its gaze a deep history lurked, a knowledge of time that no Glimpse could boast. And there was also murderous hatred-malice born out of the creature’s own evil but nursed in the never-ending night of a stone cell beneath the lake of fire while centuries passed.

  Its eyes turned on the three knights of Alleble-first almost in curiosity, then in recognition and hatred. Craning its neck back, it drew in a great breath.

  “Beware its fire!” Mallik bellowed, breaking their paralysis. Nock leaped off the road and clambered up the charred trunk of a large tree. Mallik had flung himself into a ditch near the bend in the road. Sir Rogan stood behind one of the blackened trees that remained standing.

  The Wyrm Lord spewed a molten stream onto the road where a second before they had stood.

  Nock let fly six arrows in rapid succession. But one by one they bounced away from the creature’s scales. “Weak shafts!” Nock muttered, feeling around the quiver frantically for a Blackwood shaft.

  The Wyrm Lord hissed and turned toward the archer’s perch. It discharged a burst of flames at Nock’s tree, and it gave way beneath him. Nock was far too agile to be caught so easily. He jumped from the tree where it fell and rolled to the side of the road. He stood to fire again. Finally, he found his last Blackwood shaft from among the other arrows. In a flash, he fitted it to the string and aimed for the beast’s right eye. But the creature’s fire streamed forth again.
Nock’s shot was rushed. He loosed it and dove for cover behind a low berm. For the first time in many years, Nock missed.

  The Blackwood shaft disappeared harmlessly into the shadowy woods. The Wyrm Lord unleashed its flames once more, and kept Nock pinned down. Try as he might to sink into the ground, Nock was still too close to the heat. He felt his armor grow hot, and his bowstring frayed and snapped. Nock could not breathe, and his thoughts began to swim in feverish mire.

  Seeing Nock’s plight, Mallik climbed out of the ditch and ran into the road. He hefted his great hammer and yelled as he rushed toward the creature. “Turn to me, foul-smelling beast!” he bellowed. “And bring your broad face within reach of this hammer!”

  But the Wyrm Lord was no dumb serpent, and it understood full well the speech of Glimpse-kind. It leaped down from the carriage to meet Mallik’s charge, but it kept its head away from the lethal hammer. Instead, it opened its jaws and prepared to loose an incinerating blast.

  Were it not for Sir Rogan’s quick thinking, Mallik would have perished there. Sir Rogan swept his axe across the tree he had hidden behind, and it crashed down upon the Wyrm Lord’s back. The blow stifled the creature’s fire, and it shrieked so loud and long that Mallik almost collapsed from the sound.

  The beast reached up with one of its taloned forelegs and threw the massive tree trunk back at Sir Rogan. Sir Rogan tried to avoid it, but the great tree hit the ground in front of him, bounced, and smashed into him as he fled. Sir Rogan fell like a stone, but the blackened trunk did not come to rest on his sprawled body.

  The beast turned back to Mallik, who suddenly realized how foolish and rash his attack had been. He may have saved Nock, but in so doing, he had forced Sir Rogan to expose himself. Now Sir Rogan and Nock were down, and Mallik was left alone before the Wyrm Lord. He turned to flee, but the creature’s tail whipped around and took Mallik’s legs out from under him. He rolled and stood and found himself staring into huge red eyes and gaping jaws full of ivory daggers. Mallik tried to run to his right, but the creature blocked him with one enormous claw. Mallik swerved aside and sprinted back only to find another claw waiting. Mallik-a massive Glimpse even among his large kin in the Blue Mountains-felt like a mouse being toyed with and taunted by a great cat so far superior in strength that it sought entertainment rather than a quick kill.